Featured Panelists: John Ryle , Co-founder and Executive Director of Rift Valley Institute, Legrand Ramsey Professor of Anthropology at Bard College Emmanuel Yoanes Akol Ajawin , South Sudanese Diplomat at United Nations Jacob Atem , Founder of South Sudan Health Care Organization, featured on BBC, New York Times, and USA Today's coverage of South Sudan conflict Robecca Thor , Alliance for South Sudanese in Diaspora, Acting Director of DC office Benaiah Yongo-Bure , Kettering University, Associate Professor of Social Science, widely publicized on So

The U.S. was founded as a maritime nation and was a world leader for most of the 19th and 20th centuries. We have lost much of that leadership. We have the largest Exclusive Economic Zone of all nations, and in 2010 got our first ever National Ocean Policy, but we are still stuck in the muck. We have failed to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea; application of Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning is sputtering; ecosystem-based management remains elusive; and the ocean is rarely mentioned as a source of jobs and new economic activity in the current debate.